Paradise Is Lost
by Windy Darlington
Summary: Smoke drifts along the battlefield, the gauze curtain between death and life—parted to accept the noble and valiant victims of war. Death knows no side, and chooses no victor. Peter lifts his hand, and points the length of Rhindon toward the left. Gold were the days that we laid to waste in this burning sun.


.

PARADISE IS LOST

.

.

_In one breath it was gone_

_Gold were the days  
That we laid to waste  
In this burning sun_

_Paradise is lost  
Paradise is lost  
Paradise is lost._

— _GoldTop ft. Sam Tinnesz – Paradise Is Lost —_

* * *

_**A/N:** __I highly recommend listening to this song as you read. It heightens the atmosphere. _

* * *

_._

_._

Sunlight flashes white atop cut-glass sapphire water that stands pattern-shifting under the restless fingertips of the wind. Sand froths golden beneath churning hooves of a crimson stallion screaming in triumph: '_never-die'_.

_._

_._

Light explodes white in the hearts of houses turned to rubble from the stones flung out of the hands of unseen malevolent gods in the heavens. The high whine of wind shaped by propeller force echoes overhead, chanting:_'all-shall-die'_.

.

.

They stand beside one another, heads tilted back.

The flames lick hungrily toward the late-evening sky, as if with their searing fingertips they can clutch at the fabric of the firmament and catch it, also, alight. In the west, the weary sun takes pity and sends the silver bellies of the clouds to molten-gold and heated-iron glow.

The furious blaze glints on silver crowns; the mail of Narnian warriors as they cross back and forth before it, beating out advancing sparks that leap Dagori's Ford to rake at browning reeds. The jewels gleam scarlet on the halters of steaming chargers that stand heaving vapor into the ether; a cheap mime of southern drakes, their breath less devastating.

The half-built tower of Tel-Ilil burns.

The tower combined of Calormene stone and Telmarine timber.

Housed of Daradans and Telmarine knights.

Screaming assaults the evening wind. Shadows draped in carmine garlands plunge from the walls of Tel-Ilil into the deep Great River lapping at its smoldering foundation.

Metal whines softly on fine metal as Edmund sheathes his sword.

"It is good," Lucy murmurs, wiping blood from her dagger on her soot-streaked crimson skirts.

"It is," he answers graciously, dark eyes on another glowing specter as it streaks from the tower like a Star earth-bound. The hiss of steam – fire's reluctant death – whispers from the river's middle before drowning in the _lap-lap-lap_ of the relentless current.

Narnia grows. Narnia lives. Narnia is free.

_Forever_.

It is good.

Pine shingles over Calormene heads is not a house of peace, but threat of war. Lucy smiles as the tower heaves and shudders and slides down the bank into the River, as if it never was. Not that it ever Was.

.

.

The scream will reverberate within his heart long after the source is dead and buried. The image of a boy-not-man with a shadow of another life lived long before his own welling dark and threatening in savage sky-clear eyes.

The shriek of ancient metal against golden hilt – that sword of kings he held in his hands but had not will to wield – and he saw Narnia in ermine and gold, streets paved in soft rose petals, chargers shod in silver, and rulers bold and fearless and blessed by a god to reign. Honored by many, cursed by few. Haloed by the sun, guided by the stars, protected by the moon.

The blood of a thousand ancestors fallen under the edge of Narnian swords cried out in his veins, and he wanted to cower. But it was not his body that fell in front of the High King of Old.

Peter stepped away from Miraz.

To look to him.

_And he did not think he could be ready. _

.

.

Gryphons wheel aloft.

Stallions scream below.

Smoke drifts along the battlefield, the gauze curtain between death and life—parted to accept the noble and valiant victims of war. Death knows no side, and chooses no victor.

Peter lifts his hand, and points the length of Rhindon toward the left.

Susan bows her head, eyes closing, and tears her malachite veil from her hair. It cracks in her grasp, longing to be set free to tangle in the wind's embrace.

Bowstrings tense; silver-white feathers kiss sun-brown cheeks and fray into unruly rugged whiskers.

Below them, Edmund throws his charger's head to the side, cavorting on the plains of war like a boy-prince plays with tin soldiers on a field of green felt. He laughs, and his general rears and shouts a war-cry, directing with his spear as he leaps toward the army's left flank.

A gryphon screeches. Edmund turns and lifts his shrewd gaze to the cliff face. His night-dark stallion rears beneath him, beating the air with iron-spiked hooves. He raises his hand, and a sun's ray strikes against the silver crown in his raven hair, blinding in its piercing path of light. For a moment, he is frozen; the portrait of glorious war. The stallion comes back to ground, Edmund drops his arm.

The veil whips out of Susan's clutch, billowing away behind her.

Arrows whisper farewell to archer lovers, falling broken under hooves and buried within hearts.

The Telmarines retreat, leaving their dying like rotting spoils of warfare in their wake. Lucy brings all race and creed beneath the shadow of her white tents. Healers know no flag, and the living will not join the dead without a second fight.

.

.

The flames lick upwards along the collapsed timbers, the toppled brick like grinning jagged teeth against wolf's-eye yellow fire. It washes their pale faces in light.

Air raid sirens wail on high. Somewhere nearby a child screams— _'I am lost'_.

Wind barrels down the broken street, funneling toward them to rough the edges of their hair and lift their ties like torn pennant banners in its wake. A lorry burdened with bags of sand roars by them, the rush of it cool in the presence of the bomb's seething aftermath. The street is cracked like china fine; rubble – dust and glass and ash – crunches under-heel, hell's gravel footpath.

A rumble, the ground quakes beneath their bodies. Light explodes over ridgepoles and roofs.

Bombs whine and aircraft growl a mile distant.

Edmund stares as gods fling flint-stones to make mortal-burning fires.

_Edmund will not forget._

_Gryphons can be German war-gods, too._

.

.

Sunlight flashes against ocean-spray. Wind beats wave, and hooves beat sand in staccato rhythm. Laughter lashes out and echoes down the beach, thrown against cliff-front and boulder-face.

Susan drives her golden-gleaming palfrey hock-deep into sapphire sea. She lowers her reins, looking back over her shoulder as her ribbons of raven hair catch on the wind, braids unwinding, then sink down—weighted by the water, lying over the back of the gold mare with suggestion of a selkie's tattered hide. She beams, leaning back in her saddle, bare feet tickled by the surface of the ocean-top.

Peter's pale charger – the color of specters, mist, and death-shrouds – paws at the foam, kicking mermaid tears against his belly. The High King utters the war cry of Narnia, and nudges his stallion into motion. The white coarser snorts, rises up in a half-moon leap with Peter clinging to his arching mane— they plunge forward over waves shore-bound into deeper water. Peter presses his palm in circles against his beloved _Capaill_ _Uisce's_ coat, the silver ring on his finger outweighing saltwater's siren song.

Lucy's crimson and saffron skirts stream out behind her, pressing tight against her thighs. Her fingers wrapped tight in flying ebon mane and silken rope—the only rein. Her heels sink low as she rises off her saddle. The mare is of Calor, her coat is called blood—her legs are so fine they look as if they will break with each step. But the delicate face and broad back conceal a loyal heart of molten fire; a devil temper of Tash's own make. Lucy's sun-kissed brown locks stream out behind her, a brass banner on the wind, and they race on.

Edmund rides bareback without bridle and hackamore-free. He presses down against billowing black waves of rippling mane that tangle with his own. Lather flies against his bare calves, and he whispers to his warhorse in the language of its ancestors—Telmarine. They stretch thin against the beach, a streak of black on gold-white sand. Shod hooves cleaving half-circle furrows in their wake.

It is a golden age.

_The sun will not set on their reign._

.

.

"What happened here?"

The question is not that at all but a demand for answers. They are surrounded by dust and death and decay. Motes float bloated and sluggish on thick atmosphere. Sunlight shafts through broken ceiling. This is not the empire they left. This is not the Narnia they know.

Rusted swords, shattered shields, cleaved-in armor. Shadows loom velvet-thick over heaping piles of metal and bone and rotten wood.

Peter kicks a layer of mortar dust and chalky silt. It clouds into the room.

From his place among the shadows and mark of death Edmund stares out into the circle of daylight beating down on his brother's golden head. Peter mourns, but mourning is for afterward of victory. They are not victors yet—he does not know what they are.

_But we will find out, _he vows in savage silence.

.

.

The sobs echo through the dim-lit cavern.

Susan steps off the main tunnel after a moment of gazing ahead to test none other has ears that hear. She lays her bow along the shelf for offerings and tokens. Her quiver follows. No arrow knocks fletching against another. She is silent.

The weeping continues without pause.

Susan steps down a shallow flight of stairs, each one wider than the last. Her aubergine hem kisses the dust, leaving a low-lying cloud in her wake that quickly fades.

She presses a hand to an earth-hewn pillar, gouging her nails until dirt-grains run down her chainmail sleeve. She stares into the darkness. Torches light at sparing intervals in the underground chamber stretching to infinity. A catacomb for the dead—a tomb for Narnia that bears no bodies, only the soul of a world struggling to gather breath.

Peter stumbles away from a pillar of his own to fall heavy on his knees. One hand presses dirty and stained to the ground, the other against his face. His tears fall unashamedly, and dampen the ground.

There is a legend the half-dwarven professor told her—how the High King's tears cause barren earth to bud and grow bounty to feed his starving subjects. But not a single stalk of green rises up in front of her brother; a boy that was a man who is so small in this massive place. He shudders as his lungs take in a gasp of air between one sob and another. His hand pressed to the ground trembles, his arm collapses, and he is bent over himself.

Like a woman hearing news she is become a widow.

Like a father learns he outlives his child.

Like a king mourns for his people.

"Oh, Peter," Susan breathes, though he cannot hear her. Gently, she draws near.

His head lifts as she comes to him, kneeling down. Her skirts rustle, a gentle echo into graveside silence.

"Sue?" He says her name in a panting whisper, almost a breath. His lashes are black and sticking to one another. His eyes are clear, and full of horror.

"Oh, Peter," she says again, a soothing murmur that soothes nothing. In it he hears perhaps only accusation, and thinks her justified for such feeling.

"I can still hear them," he says, hoarse. He reaches for his neck, for his collar, clutching at his tunic with trembling hands. The earthen air quivers, and for a moment the world is rent. Time dissipates, vapor before heat; she sees dimly through a mirror.

_Another king—the same king. Older. She is a woman, they are covered in blood and ash. The sky is death-black. The battle was won, the victory Pyrrhic. _

_Peter wept._

Everything is strange, but this remains the same.

Peter weeps.

"Hush then, hush then; shhh, Peter, hush now," she mantras gently, compassionately. Her hand goes to his hair and she strokes it back; it is shorter than her fingers remember it should be in moments like this, and smells of salt-grass and earth.

He leans into her, forehead against her shoulder, mouth open as he chokes another sob back but it spills forth because his heart is not yet ceased to mourn for what has died and passed away. His breath is hot on her dress, and makes her skin fever-warm under the cloth.

Peter draws back, reaching for her, clinging to her sleeve, wrapping his fingers around her upper arms.

"Is there blood on my hands? Am I to blame? I don't understand—What have I done? I can still hear them, Sue! I can _still **hear** **them**. . ._" He breaks again, crumbling beneath the weight of twelve hundred years of majesty and skill that are no longer a match for a world gone mad with rage and ache.

Peter exhales, and his breath stirs the dust of the dirt floor. He coughs. Gags, moans, and closes raw eyes that have all but exhausted their tears.

Susan looks down at him, a consoling hand gentle on his back, running in useless circles meant to soothe.

The High King, brought level to a little child.

_Oh how empires fall._

_._

_._

The sun shines through the stained glass at their backs, spilling around the marble edges of the four thrones. Peter does not look to them as, haloed in golden light and crowned with a burning diadem of sun, he rises.

As if they all understand – for they all understand – they rise from their thrones as one body while trumpets sound distant down the marble hall.

The diamonds and sapphires in Susan's midnight hair catch pinpricks of light, and set like stars. Her azure skirts with silver thread and stardust grey under-slips swirl around her ankles as her hair falls to her feet. The prophets of Calormen have called her a goddess of Narnia, and she has thanked them graciously—but in the end she laughs behind Cair Paravel's locked doors at such blasphemy against the Great Lion.

Lucy's summer-green gown overextends its hem, sewn too long so as to cover bare feet southern foreigners to the north consider unseemly. She curls sun-browned fingers over the gold hilt of her dagger. Twin brass braids slide along bare shoulders, and when she smiles summer begins anew in the hearts of all Narnians.

Edmund, the judge and wise man (prophets of Calormen have come to him to seek his understanding and departed newly taught) arrayed in black and silver with raven curls dragging to his chest; swept clear of his solemn brow and grave dark eyes with intricate centaur braids. His robe sloughs lazily down his arms, half worn, half falling free. Threatening action if it is demanded—even in the land of peace and plenty.

The Pashdaan from Calormen walks up the hall from the entrance doors, but the splendor of his train fades pale compared to the wealth of happy Narnia.

"Most Elevated and Noble Majesties of this land, Narnia. I come from the Tisroc – may he live forever – to offer unto you such gifts and work and terms of peace that you do not seek out reparation for such destruction and war as the rash young Prince as placed before your path. The Tisroc – may he live forever – has offered my own life in place of Prince Rabadash if you do not think such treasures as I bring sufficient. Do with your slave as you will have be done." He prostrates himself before the throne, a fearful subject from another land.

Lucy does not look at Peter as she moves forward, her gown rippling out behind her, gossamer silk flowing in currents of her own motion. Her bare feet are silent on the cool white-rose marble tile.

A hand touches his face.

Shimri lifts his head and peers upward into the face of King Edmund. Beside him stands Queen Lucy. Her hand remains on his body, moved to his shoulder. Toward him, Edmund offers a pale hand ornamented with a lone silver ring. The serpent eats its tail, so evil will consume itself. The king who is a judge who is a wise man that could have been the brightest of prophets smiles down at him, and Shimri wonders if this is what it feels to be blessed.

"You are no slave of Narnia, my dear lord," Lucy admonishes with brilliant kindness. "You need not grovel before us, we require no such degradation; we do not hold you in offense for any wrong done by another."

"Come, take this hand of peace, and be met with friendship all our days, Pashdaan Hahmed," Edmund coaxes, his voice the depth of a forest river, melodic as one also.

"We want for nothing from Calormen but that we be free," the High King intones, and the world seems to stand still as he speaks in golden tones, eternal summer rich in his voice. He smiles broadly when Shimri looks up at him, and the corners of Peter's eyes crinkle with mirth.

"I. . . have entered paradise."

Edmund smiles and it tilts crooked. "An earthly one, perhaps—as best a mortal man can make. There is better still to come beyond the hallowed Shore in the Eastern Lands."

Shimri reaches out, ringed fingers trembling. He lies his dark hand inside Edmund's, and rises.

A hearty cheer breaks out through the great throne hall of Cair Paravel. Susan descends the dais of marble and stands beside Pashdaan Hahmed.

"Now, we shall feast as friends and equals. Tell us, what is your name?" She takes his arm as Narnians frolick about them, and soft blush petals float down from an invisible place above.

"Shimri, my lady. I am born Shimri, son of Paraan."

"I am Susan, Shimri. Welcome to Narnia—you are welcome forever, until the stars forget all our titles and we are written into myth."

.

.

It is a forest. It is a jungle. It is desolate. The woods are so still and dark. There is no music calling softly to the ear, no fountains that bubble merry in their basins, no pale towers gleaming in this early light. There are only ruins, and apple trees grown feral from their gentle ancestors.

There is no perfume of spring-budded flowers in Susan's private garden. Jasmine does not cling any longer to the lattice around his balcony, tossing dappled sunlight over his dark head as he rises at break of day. There are only marble castle bones, rising jagged from undergrowth of ancient rose briars.

There is only pain.

In the quiet morning rush of air coming sharp and brisk off the Eastern Ocean from the cove of the mermaids, Edmund Pevensie leans against what was once a marble pillar, and weeps.

_Paradise is lost._

* * *

**A/N:**

**This is inspired by "Paradise Is Lost" by GoldTop featuring the vocals of Sam Tinnesz. It didn't turn out a mirror image of what I picture in my head, but it's decent enough, and I like it. I hope you will too! If you aren't familiar with my work, I write in an AU of Narnia that I created back in 2013. It's a combination of books and films and my own elaborate canons. If you have questions, you can send me a message or leave them in a review; I will reply as quickly as I can (unfortunately all guest reviews will get no answers, I'm so sorry.)**

**_Dagori's Ford_ = inspired by my headcanon that there would be landmarks named after Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer since they're important to Narnian history and lore. Pallae Meadow (which did not come up in this one-shot, but in my headcanon is a field near Glasswater) is dedicated to Polly. **

_**P**_**_ashdaan _= of similar status to an ambassador or lower-ranking European nobleman. I love Turkish/Ottoman/Middle Eastern culture and history, and I know C. S. Lewis modeled his Calormene after them, so I'm going to continue in that vein with my headcanons. Pashdaan is a play on the Turkish "Pasha".**

**_Tel-Ilil_ = a watchtower built on the edge of the Great River (in Narnia, but near the Telmarine border (another aspect of my AU is I have rearranged where Telmar is located in Narnia) so technically an invasion of Narnia). Edmund and Lucy plot a covert attack and destroy it.**

**Please do tell me what you think!**


End file.
